things to do: brewcity bruisers

When I was in college, the movie Whip It came out. The local roller derby team sponsored a premiere with free posters and such, so I figured I would check it out. I loved the movie (female friendships! awesome music!), but more than that, I was super intrigued by the sport. I wished I was tough enough to be a roller girl (for reference, I somehow managed to scrape my hand on the couch yesterday. The couch!), but the fact remained that I still hadn't seen a live bout. Well, no longer! Last night I checked off one of my year goals: I attended a roller derby bout! And it was awesome!

Warm-ups! Everybody was already blurry and this was the slowest part of the night!

The Brewcity Bruisers are Milwaukee's rollergirls; the league is made up of four teams, so really, it's two bouts for the price of one. Last night, we saw Crazy 8s vs. Maiden Milwaukee and Rushin' Rollettes vs. Shevil Knevils. Each bout has two periods, so we got plenty of halftime shows too! Halftime for the first bout was a dance performance by the Beerleaders; during the second, there were Racing Beers ala Miller Park's Racing Sausages (if you aren't familiar, well...it's a quintessentially Milwaukee thing, kind of hard to explain. Basically people dressed as anthropomorphic sausages (or in this case, beer bottles) race one another in a humorous fashion). The main halftime between the two bouts featured a bout by the Micro Bruisers, the youth derby league. Man, I wish I was that awesome when I was 8-17 - maybe I would be tougher today if I'd been doing derby instead of whatever it was I was actually doing (reading, probably, or theater. Both worthy hobbies, but not lending to athletic prowess).

For an $18 at the door/$15 in advance (or with a promo - K and I got a discount for bringing nonperishable items for a food drive) ticket price, you get an awful lot of bang for your buck. There was a communist lime cheering on one team, beerleaders slingshotting t-shirts into the cheap seats, and rollergirls going flying into the crowd seated around the track (K and I decided to stay off the ground level in some real seats for our first outing). If you're not familiar with the rules of the sport, don't worry! The announcers give a lot of information in their play-by-plays, and it's really not hard to pick up on the basics. Even if you aren't sure what's going on, it's always exciting to watch!

K and I came home with the urge to make our way to the local roller rink to strap on some skates ourselves (for some much slower, hopefully less hip checking fun), and are definitely planning to hit the next bout on March 9th - if you're in the Milwaukee area, put it on your calendar now and prepare for some high-speed fun!